Sheep's head

“ Suddenly I saw the beast's head drop earthward as if depressed by the weight of its enormous horns; then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged itself from that spot in a generally horizontal direction to within about four yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. ”

“ As the fox, who has distanced his pursuers, lightly canters along the hedge-side of a large grass field, the sheep instantly not only congregate to stare at him, but for a considerable time remain spell-bound, gazing in the direction of his course. Herds of bullocks with noses almost touching the ground, and with long straight tails slanting upwards, jump sometimes into the air, and sometimes sideways, with joy. ”

“ He attains the size of a sheep, has a voluminous head, small round ears, eyes large and black, a thick divided nose flanked by formidable whiskers, a short neck, a thick body covered with short, coarse, russet hair, and short legs ”

“ A sheep feeds upon these plants, and gives birth to two lambs, having, the one the moon on its head, the other a star on its neck. The wicked sister, who has meanwhile been married to the king, orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown out into the road. ”

“ The Puruk sheep, if permitted, thrusts its head into the cooking pot, picks up crumbs, is eager to drink the remains of a cup of broth, and examine the hand of its master for barley, flour, or a cleanly picked bone, which it disdains not to nibble; a leaf of lettuce, a peeling of turnip, the skin of the apricot, give a luxury; and the industry is indefatigable with which this animal detects, and appropriates substances, so minute and uninviting as would be unseen and neglected by ordinary sheep; perhaps the dog of the cottager is not so completely domesticated as it is. ”

“ During the warmer part of the summer days the fly goes about depositing its young in the nose of the sheep. The young then work their way upward into cavities of the head between the eyes, but not into the brain cavity. ”

“ When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to a mere skeleton and die. ”

“ "You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like," said the Sheep; "but you can't look all round you——unless you've got eyes at the back of your head." ”

“ And these dark figures, with their dark bronze-like faces, this queer and monotonous calling of sheep, the sight of these human beings and helpless animals fused into one mass by a common, primal sense of fear created the impression of something chaotic and primordial. ”

“ Yet still it must be acknowledged that the seeds of this disease will sometimes lie so occult, as to baffle all skill, and that no man can with absolute certainty draw a stock tainted with the rot. There is another method, to which men of inferior skill resort, which is more easily acquired. They take a sheep's head between their hands, and press down the eyelids, they thereby make the sheep turn its eyeball so that they get a view of the vessels in which the eyeball rolls: if these are thin, red, and free of matter, they consider the sheep as sound ”

“ The form of the head is sometimes deemed of little or no consequence, it being generally, perhaps, supposed that a good hog may have an ugly head; but the head of all animals is one of the very principal points in which pure or impure breeding will be most obviously indicated. ”

“ The South-Down sheep are polled, but it is probable that the original breed was horned, as it is not unusual to find among the male South-Down lambs some with small horns. The dusky, or at times, black hue of the head and legs fully establishes the original color of the sheep, and, perhaps of all sheep ”

“ The attention of the farmer has hardly, if ever, been called to this fact, though I believe that, for one instance in which perforation occurs in the frontal bone, it will be noticed a score of times on the sides of the head. ”

“ The poles or rails for stack-pens or hay-holders should be so small as to entirely prevent the sheep from inserting their heads in them after hay. A sheep will often insert his head where the opening is wide enough for that purpose, shove it along, or get crowded, to where the opening is not wide enough to withdraw the head, and it will hang there until observed and extricated by the shepherd. If, as often happens, it is thus caught when its foreparts are elevated by climbing up the side of the pen, it will continue to lose its footing in its struggles, and will soon choke to death. ”

“ A most unusual proof of kindly feeding in the animals of this shape, is their feeling quite fat, just within their fore legs, on the rib; a point in which sheep are seldom examined, from common breeds never carrying fat there. They are particularly distinguished by the lightness of the offal, the bones being one-half smaller than in some other breeds, and the meat proportionally thicker, while the pelt is thin, and the head small—a thing of some consequence in most parts of England, where that Scottish luxury, sheep-head broth, is so cordially despised. ”

“ The sheep leaps frantically into the air two or three times, dashes itself on the ground, and suddenly rises, and dies in a few minutes.
Where animals in somewhat poor condition are rather forced forward for the purpose of raising their condition, it sometimes happens that they become suddenly blind and motionless; they will not follow their companions; when approached, they run about, knocking their heads against fences, etc.; the head is drawn round toward one side; they fall, grind their teeth, and their mouths are covered with a frothy mucus. ”

“ All sorts of cattle are here in great plenty. The cows are generally white, with large dewlaps hanging down to their knees, hair like silk, and wide horns. The sheep are of good size and black: they have large heads, which they carry very erect, and small ears, and are covered with hair instead of wool. ”

“ The Cheviot Sheep have a bare head, with a long jaw, and white face, but no horns. Sometimes they have a shade of grey upon the nose, approaching to dark at the tip; at others, a tinge of lemon colour on the face, but these markings scarcely affect their value. ”

“ The horns of the male are comparatively large, curved, and with more or less of a spiral form; the head is large, but the forehead rather low. A few of the females are horned; but, generally speaking, they are without horns. Both male and female have a peculiar coarse and unsightly growth of hair on the forehead and cheeks, which the careful shepherd cuts away before the shearing-time ”

“ Sheep are to be found on most every large farm and are kept for both wool and mutton. Buyers visit these farms early in the winter and contract to take the lambs at a certain time in the spring, paying a price based on their live weight. ”

“ Under these circumstances the additional horns usually occupy the upper and fore part of the head, and are of a more slender shape, and take a more upright direction than the others, thus approaching in character to those of the goats, while the true horns retain more or less of the spiral curve that distinguishes those of the sheep. ”

“ During the winter months, this affection is of very frequent occurence among sheep; but health is only in a few instances seriously affected. It is brought on by the exposure of the animal to intense cold, or to sudden chills, after it has been heated. In slight cases, the only annoyance to which the sheep is subjected, is from matter accumulating in the nostril, and plugging up the orifice, so that the poor creature is compelled to raise its head every three or four minutes, and labour hard for breath. ”

“ He ceases to be a linnet as soon as he is snatched from the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we snatch the wild sheep from its native rock, and, instead of eating and wearing it at once, carry it home, and breed the hair out of its wool and the bones out of its body, it ceases to be a sheep. ”

“ As the train now flies through our verdant fields, the cattle grazing on each side do not even raise their heads to look at it; the timid sheep fears it no more than the wind; indeed, the hen-partridge, running with her brood along the embankment of a deep cutting, does not now even crouch as it passes close by her. ”

“ And each day the little boy came to the bars and looked at the sheep and enquired how the wool was growing.
"I am getting along finely," the Black Sheep would answer, "for not one sheep in the pasture has so much wool as I have grown already." ”

“ They were fond of him in spite of all his faults. "Oh, why!" cried the cow, with tears in her eyes (and the bell that was hung round her neck shook and rang as she leaned over him) ,—"why did you leave the field with the black sheep?"
"He did it first," said the white one in a faint voice.
"Then why did you jump down that steep place? Could you not see that it was a pit?"
"I did not stop to see. He did it first," said the white sheep. Then, with a groan, he went on to ask, "How is the black sheep? Is he here too? And what does the man think who comes to see us?" ”

“ So the Black Sheep began to grow wool, and tried in every way to grow the finest and heaviest fleece in all the flock. She always lay in the sunniest part of the pastures, and drank from the clearest part of the brook, and ate only the young and juicy shoots of grass and the tenderest of the sheep-sorrel. ”

“ When the flock is taken to the Alps, the sheep, instead of being driven before the shepherd, regularly follow him as he marches majestically in front,—tall, thin, sunburnt, and dirty,—armed with his long iron-pointed stick. ”

“ The trained eye of the gardener recognizes each hyacinth among hundreds of bulbs; of the shepherd, each sheep in his flock; of the Laplander, each reindeer crowded in his herd like ants on the anthill. In a flock of 1,000 sheep each mother can even recognize a variation in the voice of her own lamb, all alike to us. ”

“ The Sheep eating the acorns, inadvertently frayed and tore the cloak. The Shepherd coming down, and seeing what was done, said, "O you most ungrateful creatures! you provide wool to make garments for all other men, but you destroy the clothes of him who feeds you. ”

“ The big fat sheep, which are penned in the lowlands of England, with a tinkling bell strapped to the neck of the king of the flock, convey a notion of peace and plenty to the mind of the spectator, that the shy active mountain sheep, with their angry grunt and stamping of their feet never convey. ”

“ A lot of trouble we should have if the men did not look after such things for us; but that is what men are for, they say,—to look after us Sheep."
"But won't they laugh at me when my tail is shorter?" asked her son. [Pg 19]
"They would laugh at you if you wore it long. No Lamb who pretends to be anybody would be seen in the pasture with a dangling tail. Only wild Sheep wear them long, poor things!" ”

“ The wool of sheep is also much injured by them; the tails and manes of horses are converted into such tangled masses, that the hair has to be cut close off, by which the natural beauty of these valuable animals is impaired. ”

“ He couldn't get used to the slow movements of the ewes and the other lambs. His muscles seemed to itch and burn when he was idle. He wanted to run, to dash up the rocky cliffs; and yet he dared not leave the flock. The gregarious instinct among sheep is too well ingenerated for that. ”

“ Before the Spring is half through nearly all the grey sheep have one or two little white woolly children trotting about with them, and we watch the lambs chasing each other and skipping over tussocks of grass like little wild mountain goats. The Imp and the Elf are always wondering what they think about in those queer little heads of theirs, with the big ears and great round puzzled eyes. ”

“ On first embracing the leg, the crook should be drawn quickly toward the shepherd, so as to bring the bend of the loop against the leg as high up as the hock, before the sheep has time even to break off ”

“ And then is it not the fact that some little amount of shade in the fleece of male sheep is considered, if not absolutely desirable, at any rate quite pardonable? A male sheep with a fleece as white as that of a ewe-lamb,—is he not considered to be, among muttons, somewhat insipid? ”

“ The third operator has almost finished his sheep, which, as its dark gray fleece slips away from its pink-and-white neck and shoulders, suggests a rather décolletée dowager in the act of removing her theatre-cloak in the stalls. Sheep, already shorn, lie and pant in shamed and shivering bewilderment, one or two nibble the blades of grass, as if to assure themselves that that resource is still open to them. ”

“ Generally, the oldest ram is distinguished by a bell, and, when the flock moves over the hilly slopes, the Sheep walk in file after the leader, making narrow paths, which are very distinct from a distance, but are scarcely perceptible when the foot of the traveller is actually upon them. From this habit has arisen an ancient proverb, "As the sheep after the sheep, so the daughter after the mother," a saying which is another form of our own familiar proverb, "What is bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh." ”

“ The day will come when the jaw-bone of the big sheep, or ‘caoirich mhora,’ will put the plough on the rafters (air an aradh) ; when sheep shall become so numerous that the bleating of the one shall be heard by the other from Conchra in Lochalsh to Bun-da-Loch in Kintail they shall be at their height in price, and henceforth will go back and deteriorate, until they disappear altogether, and be so thoroughly forgotten that a man finding the jaw-bone of a sheep in a cairn, will not recognise it, or be able to tell what animal it belonged to. ”

“ The sheep are led by many a way, sometimes through sweet meadows, sometimes limping along sharp-flinted, dusty highways, sometimes high up over rough, rocky mountain-passes, sometimes down through deep gorges, with no sunshine in their gloom; but they are ever being led to one place, and when the hot day is over they are gathered into one fold, and the sinking sun sees them safe, where no wolf can come, nor any robber climb up any more, but all shall rest for ever under the Shepherd's eye. ”